Processing solutions for developing silver halide photographic light sensitive materials, such as a black-and-white developer, a fixer, a color developer, a bleacher, a bleach-fixer and a stabilizer, are often packaged in plastic containers as concentrated solutions for ease of handling. The containers can be supplied together to the end user, as a processing agent kit. The concentrated solutions are dissolved in water by the user, to prepare the working solutions.
Recently in the photographic processing industry, many small-sized photofinishing laboratories, so-called Mini-Labs, have been established in which small-sized automatic processors are being used. With the spread of the mini-labs, the plastic bottles for processing agents have also rapidly increased in numbers year by year.
The plastics have been widely used for not only the bottles for photographic processing agents but also many other purposes, because they are light in weight and durable in nature. The output of plastic material in the whole world kept increasing year by year, and the annual output in 1988 exceeded one billion tons. On the other hand, the amount of discarded plastic has increased tremendously. In Japan, for example, about 40% of the total output thereof is wasted yearly. When the plastic wastes are abandoned in the sea, the inhabitable conditions for oceanic life deteriorate. In Europe, acid rain problems have also been raised, because the plastics are incinerated in trash burners having imperfect exhaust-gas treatment units. The above-mentioned problems have been becoming serious.
Therefore, some urgent countermeasures must be taken to solve the problems. In Europe, there are, at present, the positive movements to enact legal regulations on, for example, an obligation to recycle plastics or not to use plastics but to use decomposable plastics.
In view of the consideration described above, it is objectionable to use even a small number of plastic bottles for shipment of photographic processing solutions.
One possible way to avoid the use of plastic bottles to ship concentrated photographic processing liquids, is to ship them as powders. When dissolving the powders, some of the fine particles can become suspended in air, creating a health hazard for workers who may inhale the particles and/or possibly contaminate other processing solution baths when the particles settle. Accordingly, the technique for granulating a photographic processing agent so as to make a granulated mixture have been proposed in, for example, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as JP OPI Publication) Nos. 2-109042/1990 and 2-109043/1990, U.S. Pat. No. 2,843,484 and JP OPI Publication No. 3-39735/1991. However, there are still problems raised, such as the labor safety and hygienic problems produced by scattering the powdery dust discussed above. In addition, there are problems of caking and/or incomplete dissolution due to properties of the granules. It is, therefore, the actual situation that an agent suitable for powdering or granulating is still considerably limited.
As for the desirable forms of the processing agents capable of effectively employing the advantages which the above-mentioned dried agents have, the tableted agents are proposed in, for example, JP OPI Publication No. 51-61837/1976 and Canadian Patent No. 831,928. However, other new problems are raised when making tableted agents. The problems are as follows. Stains are produced when development is carried out utilizing a processing solution prepared from a stored tablet and, further, yellow stain is produced in the edge portions of a processed color paper. The above-mentioned two points are the important keys for the photographic characteristics and, if these problems are produced, the commercial values of the agents are so greatly decreased as to raise a serious problem. The resolution of the problems has now become urgent.